Likely a huge “gamble” to do so
When you have been using a .com domain for about 12 years and counting, then switching to a super not popular TLD (Top Level Domain), what would you have in your mind?
Most likely you’d keep your .com domain, instead of switching to a .kim domain. Right?
I had been thinking about that for couple of months actually. And I stubbornly decided to switch to that .kim domain.
rizqifahma.com -> riz.kim
Why oh why did I decide to switch?
Like I was not busy at all, I just added another weight to my mind, to just buy another domain that was aimed to be my “new identity” on the web. Very stupid enough to forget ignore about all those SEO (Search Engine Optimization) advantages I have through the years to my rizqifahma.com domain. That domain had brought 600,000s of views, some backlinks, and Search Engine positions when people googled about my name or some keywords that I used to rank for. Surely, those are some of the negative sides of letting the rizqifahma.com “go”.
And I am just ready for that.
I did not really care too much of that SEO or whatsoever advantages that my rizqifahma.com domain had in the past. It was what it was. That I was quite sad to let it go, surely. 12 years of using that domain, since I was still in the uni brought much memory. Met some people through blogging, sometimes put it on my CV as well, writing stuff about me life, study, and things, surely giving me some chills when I decided that it was the time to start forgetting about that domain. But don’t be so sad, dear me.
Again, why switching?
First:
I just want to use a much more simple domain. A shorter one, so I don’t need to type too many letters on that url field on the browser.
rizqifahma.com is 10 letters (excluding the .com)
riz.kim is only 3 letters (excluding the .kim)
Second:
It is related to the real life. Many people don’t write my name correctly. People would ask me several times to make it right.
Rizky, Risky, Riski, Rizki, blah blah blah… But the correct one is Rizqi.
People would spell the last few letters of my name incorrectly, and most of the time the first 3 letters spelled quite correctly.
Imagine if people look for the name on google, they would get lost and found the different people.
Using only riz and the TLD (domain .com, .net, .kim, or whatever) as my new domain could make it much more convenient.
Welcome to the unknown
Hello to .kim domain.
Finding the TLD for riz was not easy at all. A lot of considerations for sure, whether it was the availability (price and stuff), popularity, and other reasons, I chose .kim. The reasons:
- Quite affordable (probably around $15)
- Short enough, just like .com, only consisted of 3 letters
- It’s AVAILABLE! And it was on Cloudflare domain registration list as well
riz (3 letters) on some TLDs, like .dev was labelled premium, that could set me back of hundreds of US Dollars. Surely I wouldn’t spend that much on just 1 domain only. Meanwhile .kim was just costing me about a few bucks in the first year, and about $15 annual renewal cost.
What would happen to the rizqifahma.com?
For now it’s still online, still in use by me. Though it is used for redirection to my riz.kim domain. I need to make “the transition” smooth, by keeping it and redirect the traffic to the new domain. SEO wise, it would really help. Google wouldn’t be so surprised when it was set that way. Google and other Search Engine would get used to redirect all the keywords that belonged to my previous domain to my new one, and would likely know that the correct domain in use is riz.kim, instead of rizqifahma.com. Hopefully. But I saw that my riz.kim domain started to appear on Google Search Result Page already after a few days of switching.
Aside of 301 redirection setup I did, I have also setup my Google Analytics to follow the switch as well.
So… rizqifahma.com will still be online, but any visit to that domain will be redirected to riz.kim. And I think I will still be using that domain for the next few years.
Lastly, how’s the experience after switching?
Obviously, the traffic was dropped, especially in the first few days after the switch, even though I have set up the redirection rule on my server. The first day’s views was only less than 5 I reckon. Surely noticable. Although my daily views was not that much, only about 100. But super rarely that low (5).
Honestly I was panic when I saw that there’s almost no views to my blog after the switch. I thought, OMG, I made a huge mistake. But I believed that the redirection would work, and the traffic would resumed. And boy it was.
Well, that’s it. My story about switching from my .com domain to an unknown .kim domain. I move from a 12 years and counting domain to a domain that I don’t even have a middle name to (.kim).
PS: As previously mentioned, I don’t have any relation with “Kim” family name. I am not a Korean, and not a Kpoppers as well. No intention to use it inappropriately, though.
